When caring for the children I like to encourage them to explore different ways of play with a toy. This enables them to explore their imagination and use their own ideas and creative thinking skills.

The Num Noms are a great way of encouraging thinking and learning.

The children found some great ways of playing games with these toys!

Here are their ideas:-

Smell test- using a blindfold to hide their eyes the children had to guess what Num Nom they could smell, (Your sense of smell warns you of dangers such as smoke and poisonous gases. It also helps you appreciate the full flavours of food and drink. Your sense of smell is 10,000 times more sensitive than your sense of taste). We have 9 Num Noms so the winner was the one who could guess the most.

Stacking game- who can stack the most Num Noms on top of each other to make a tower without it tipping over. This helps younger children to count and use their fine motor skills.

(the coordination of small muscles, in movements—usually involving the synchronisation of hands and fingers—with the eyes).

Cooking game- allow the children to choose one, two or three of the Num Noms and try and create the food for real.

Cooking with children can provide many beneficial learning experiences, like mathematics learning phrases like 'more than' or 'less than' than by weighing out ingredients. In the UK weigh in grams rather than imperial measures. Let your child feel a 1kg bag of flour or sugar, feel how heavy it is, this helps to develop estimation skills. Get children to count how many scoops etc and recognise the numbers on the scales , your child can learn about timing too, how long it needs to be cooked and what time will it be ready.

Cooking can also help your child to learn lots of new words and concepts through discussion while you are cooking. Look at the recipe together, follow the instructions, learn the names of the ingredients and words like whisk and stir. Encourage children to look for words on packets like eggs and flour help them find these words in the recipe.

Science plays a big part in cooking as it involves the concept of changing materials. What happens to flour when you add liquid? What happens to cake mix when it is cooked? Juice can become ice lollies when frozen and chocolate melts when heated. Discuss where foods come from and how and where various foods grow. Ask questions and talk to them about which foods can give them energy to run and jump, which ones help them to grow strong and which foods are not healthy.

Allow your child to carry out as many of the cooking tasks as possible (excluding dangerous ones where sharp knives are involved). Tasks like holding a spoon, mixing, beating, shaking, pouring, rolling or cutting will help to develop your child’s fine motor skills whilst encouraging your child to smell and feel the ingredients will help to improve his or her use of senses.

Cooking helps children communicate with each other, learn to share, take turns, listen, follow instructions and be creative. Then when the cooking is over, you can all sit down together and enjoy eating your creations!

Here are our Num Nom creations!

To create Nana Puffs we made vanilla cupcakes!

To create Strawberry Froyo we made fairy cakes with strawberry icing and coconut sprinkles!